Galen Koch: [00:00:02] I’ll just hold this, and sometimes I have to get a little bit close like that. We’ll just start by saying it’s November 30. We’re here at Presumpscot Regional Land Trust, and I will have you just say your full name and introduce yourself, where you live now.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:00:22] Where I live now or where I lived then?

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:24] Where you live now. Then we’ll get into where you lived then. But where are you coming from today? With the papers, when you’re speaking, I’ll just have you get them settled and then not rustle them when you’re speaking.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:00:43] You bet. Get all the rustling over with now. All right. There we go.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:51] If you need to, you can just stop, and we’ll just take a pause.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:00:56] Okay.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:57] What’s your full name, and where do you live?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:00:59] Richard Curtis and I live on Ocean Avenue in Portland, Maine.

 

Galen Koch: [00:01:06] Great. Where did you live at the time that you were involved in the Land Trust?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:01:11] I lived out in Gorham.

 

Galen Koch: [00:01:16] Can you tell me how did you first hear about the Land Trust? You were one of the founders. Were you?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:01:22] No, I wasn’t a founder. I wasn’t quite a founder. What happened was we had moved to town not too long ago and were invited to a potluck supper. I don’t remember a lot about it, except that I remember meeting somebody named Bob Frazier, who was kind of involved in the origins of the Land Trust. He mentioned the fact that that subject would come up and talked a little bit about the Land Trust and what the goals of it and so forth were. That really rang a bell with us because we were just looking for some opportunity like that. That was the very beginning. Not too long after that, I met with Dr. Burt Knapp, who was the first president of the Land Trust. He was just encouraging us to get involved, specifically for me to get out there on the trails and help with the stewardship activities. I began doing that, and that was probably in the late 1980s.

 

Galen Koch: [00:02:32] Wow. That was a long time ago.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:02:34] Yes, a good reason to not remember all the details.

 

Galen Koch: [00:02:45] Remind me of the name of that land trust that you were working with at the time.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:02:48] Well, at the time, there wasn’t a land trust at that particular date, but not long afterward, the Gorham Land Trust was formed, and so I was working with stewardship activities for the Gorham Land Trust.

 

Galen Koch: [00:03:08] What sort of things were you doing at that point? How many preserves were there? Do you remember?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:03:13] I remember only one specific preserve. That was the Little River Preserve. I don’t know if that was the first one, but it was certainly pretty early. I remember being out there and working on trails and meeting some of the people who were part of the Land Trust.

 

Galen Koch: [00:03:50] When you say you went to this potluck, and when you say “we,” is that you and your partner?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:03:57] My wife. Yes.

 

Galen Koch: [00:04:01] You said it was something that you knew you wanted to get involved with, but why was it something you wanted to get involved with? What motivated you to be wanting to do that?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:04:14] We had grown up in a place where it was experiencing very rapid population increase; that was Long Island, New York. I grew up in a very rural area with lots of woods and trails, old Indian trails that were fascinating, and so forth. It was quickly overrun by a wave of population that came up from New York City. I saw what was happening there, the fact that there weren’t any public lands available, nothing was being put aside for land conservation. We moved to Maine, in part, in response to that. We knew this was not somewhere that we wanted to raise a child, so we moved to Maine. When we got to Maine, we realized, well, what happened there on Long Island in New York would sooner or later happen up near Portland, Maine. So, although we moved to a place in Gorham that was relatively rural, we could see the handwriting on the wall, and we already knew that we wanted to do our part as far as preserving some land, making public spaces, that kind of thing.

 

Galen Koch: [00:05:42] So you became a volunteer at that time.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:05:46] Yes.

 

Galen Koch: [00:05:46] And then what happened? What was your evolution with leadership?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:05:54] Well, the evolution happened in kind of a natural way. I did that kind of work for a period of time, and then people who were the leaders, Dr. Knapp and so forth, were looking for somebody to manage and take over the stewardship responsibility. So, I did that, and then, somewhat after that, I joined the board. Then there was a Stewardship Committee formed, so it got a little more structured as time went on, and I became the leader of the Stewardship Committee.

 

Galen Koch: [00:06:35] What time period was that? Do you know?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:06:37] I don’t remember.

 

Galen Koch: [00:06:38] I know it’s hard to get the decades.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:06:42] It probably was in the mid-’90s. That kind of time frame. I did that for quite some time, really, and remained on the board for all that time. The Land Trust had had several different presidents, and we were trying to turn the presidents over fairly quickly, but it seemed as though it was my turn to become the president. So, in 2004, I think, I became the board president of the Land Trust, and that lasted for a long time, up until 2014, I think.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:27] Wow. We’ll get to all, but I’m just parsing out the timeline because you have a long timeline; there was a merger with Presumpscot Regional Land Trust at some point.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:07:44] The merger happened actually after I had left the presidency. I was still on the board, so the merger happened after that. There had been extensive conversations, for instance, with Windham Land Trust. We’d been talking with them for three or four years before the actual merger happened. It was a very gradual thing in which everybody looked at alternatives and possibilities, and finally, it happened.

 

Galen Koch: [00:08:17] Can you tell me, just going back to those years, chairing the Stewardship committee and then in a leadership position – I mean, both of those are leadership positions – but being the president, do you have highlights from those years? Things that you think of that stand out to you?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:08:36] I do have some. Let me try to lift a few of them anyway. We worked hard on growing the number of conserved lands. We felt that was a very important thing, and it was rather difficult in the beginning because nobody in the region really knew what a land trust was, what conserved land was, or so forth. There were a lot of misconceptions surrounding that. We got a lot of interest, but a pretty good fraction of the people decided not to donate their land because they had expectations that weren’t really in line with what a land trust would do, and we’re very glad, I’m sure, that many of those never took place. Unfortunately, a few did take place, but that’s history. So, continued growth, growth in membership, continued to reach out to various groups and build the interest level. I think the interest level was always very high among some people, but a lot of people were just busy with their ordinary lives and weren’t interested in being distracted by a land trust or the things we wanted to do. So, the membership grew slowly, but we continued with it. We expanded our area of interest beyond Gorham; we started strictly in Gorham, and then we expanded that into Standish and Gray and parts of Westbrook. We changed our name at that time to the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust because now we really represented a larger area than Gorham, and we wanted to make that clear. We hired a Development Administrator, Tania Neuschafer, who was with us for about three years, I think, and she really helped tremendously with the fundraising. That was always a problem for us, getting enough money to really do the things we felt we needed to do. She helped tremendously on that. We put together a five-year strategic plan, and in large part, Will Plumley led that effort, and he was a very valuable contributor to that. I think you’re going to interview him later.

 

Galen Koch: [00:11:16] I will tomorrow.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:11:23] Good. We participated in a number of regional activity organizations; Presumpscot River Watch was one of them, the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative was another, Casco Bay Estuary Partnership, Presumpscot River Watershed Coalition, Sebago to Sea, and that was in collaboration with the Mountain Division and the Mainland Conservation Conference and then the Maine Land Trust Network. All those people contributed in some way by us going to them and talking to them and getting to know how all this stuff works. They were tremendously helpful, all of them. The Maine Land Trust Network, I’d say, was maybe the most valuable of all of them because this was a meeting that took place every month, and it was all of the leadership of the land trusts that were part of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which was coastally oriented and yet they knew that it was important to develop conservation efforts inland as well. They put together this network, and they had people coming from the various land trusts and experts consulting with us and presenting to us. Very helpful. One thing that I particularly remember – just a remembrance – was, for me, a very memorable occasion; we had an annual meeting which was held at St. Joseph’s College in Standish. That was our biggest meeting by far, the annual meeting. We had good attendance and a really good speaker, and we got a lot of attention from the Standish neighborhood; until then, we had had relatively little participation from that neighborhood. We got a lot of input, and I think we actually got an easement on a property that was very close to that, the Stuart property nearby. All that happened, and to me that seems like a turning point that we just had a much higher profile after that and much better participation from around a larger area.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:08] When you say changing the name to Presumpscot Regional Land Trust, I was under the impression that they merged, but it was more like Gorham Land Trust became PRLT at some point.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:14:24] Yes, right. These other areas, like Standish, for instance, didn’t have a land trust, and Gray didn’t have a land trust, so we just kind of expanded our borders outward and started talking to people there and seeing what we could do. That was the point at which we became the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust. Then, the merger with Windham and so forth happened at quite a later date. I can’t remember now, but maybe five years later or something significant.

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:03] Right. I don’t need the dates. There’s a timeline somewhere out there that I can look at.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:15:11

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:13] That’s really interesting. So, this annual meeting, did you notice that things had shifted? Was that after the Windham merger?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:15:27] This was way before the Windham merger. Well before the Windham merger. At that point, we were probably already talking to Windham. We could try to put a timeline on that, too. I remember talking to Priscilla long before the merger actually ever happened.

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:49] I’m going to talk to Priscilla at 3:30.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:15:52] Oh, good.

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:54] So, that will be a good tie-in.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:15:55] Maybe she’ll have a better timeline than I do.

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:57] No, that’s great. It doesn’t matter the dates; it’s more the chronology. It’s nice to know when certain things happened in the order that they happened. I have a question before we go to the next question: just about how you expanded membership and how you got people interested at the very beginning, especially, as you said, land conservation wasn’t really something people even knew about. How did you do that?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:16:38] Newspaper articles were very important, and The Gorham Times helped a lot in that respect. They always had somebody who was interested in things, and we would go to visit a given preserve, and sometimes a reporter would come along and take some pictures. That was a very important way of doing that. Also, we went to various meetings of things like the Lions Club, where one of us would give a presentation and talk about the Land Trust and what we did. It was primarily that kind of thing that we did. I don’t know that we ever got any publicity beyond maybe the American Journal, but that could have been it.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:32] It was person-to-person, it sounds like.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:17:34] Oh, yes, absolutely.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:37] I talked to Don Wescott this morning.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:17:40] Good.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:41] I think he’s someone you had reached out to.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:17:43] Yeah, right.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:46] He mentioned your name.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:17:50] We were doing this together for some years; I can’t remember again the dates, but he was very important, and he was very important in our stewardship activities throughout his tenure.

 

Galen Koch: [00:18:09] Yeah, that’s what it sounded like. This question I really like, and I know you have something written for it, which is great, but the question of what the Land Trust, during your leadership, what value that it brought to the community that it served. Can you speak to that?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:18:28] In my mind, some of the key things are conserving some of the aspects of life as it was experienced by the previous generations, in other words, our heritage, helping to conserve some of that. Conserve some of the places that people knew and treasured, but then also allow public access for people almost in their backyard or very close. Up until that time, there really wasn’t any place in Gorham that you could just go for a walk in nature. You had to hop in your car and drive somewhere. You might drive halfway up the state to get to a nice park. This gave them the opportunity to just go down the road, and there it was, and I think that was a very important connection. I continue to think that’s a very important thing for people to be able to do. We brought all of that to the community. Something else that really developed a little bit later was the education aspect of it, getting the younger generation, the kids, involved. We’ll deal on that a little bit later.

 

Galen Koch: [00:19:53] What are some of your proudest moments in your leadership, your long legacy?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:20:02] Well, I think overall, I didn’t feel as though I caused anything to happen all by myself; it was really a bunch of us who were working together, and I think everybody was an equal contributor there. I organized things to some extent, but everybody was an equal contributor. I was very proud to be part of that organization. We started on a shoestring. We just literally only had a few dollar bills to rub between our fingers. So, we couldn’t do much in terms of acquiring property or whatever, but we grew very steadily, very slowly, and got recognition. I’m very proud of the fact that the Land Trust had such small beginnings, but eventually, it has grown to be one of the premier land trusts in the state, certainly in our part of the state. We don’t get the national preeminence of Acadia National Park, but we get a lot, and it’s well-deserved. That’s the key thing in my mind. I really am very appreciative of all the people along the way, and there have been plenty of people who have contributed their share in helping this move forward. My thanks go out to them.

 

Galen Koch: [00:21:39] Yeah. Maybe you could speak to this actually as someone who was involved in the early days of this land conservation and the type of conservation where you’re actually preserving a plot of land that’s just next door to you. It’s not the Acadia National Park model. I don’t know what you would call that, but it’s a different kind of conservation model.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:22:09] Yes, it is. It’s very much a neighborhood. I’d call it a neighborhood conservation model. I think it’s very important that people have that opportunity. They can go out on a Sunday afternoon if they have a few hours, take the kids, and go for a walk. It’s really valuable.

 

Galen Koch: [00:22:28] It sounded like you were motivated by seeing that taken away on Long Island.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:22:35] Yes. Right, exactly

 

Galen Koch: [00:22:39] What is this note here about your favorite things?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:22:42] Oh, I just thought I would throw in – what did I really enjoy doing? One of them was at one of these presentations to a local organization that is appreciative of what we’re doing, so you get positive feedback, just explaining to them what the land trust business is all about and how it helps the community and getting feedback from them. That was a real rush, a thrill, to do that and to know these people get it. Now, if we can only spread that word farther and faster, which we eventually did. That was one thing. I love going out into a new preserve that maybe doesn’t have any trails, and we certainly have some of those still, and say, “Well, we want to make a trail. Where should it go?” You get to kind of explore. You’re an explorer. What are the interesting points about this? What would be the logistics of getting the trail made? What would be ecologically desirable in terms of avoiding erosion? All these factors come in, and you get to stake it out and say, “Okay, this is where that trail is going to be.” It’s a nifty thing to go through, and I didn’t do it too many times, but the times I did do it were rewarding. Very good.

 

Galen Koch: [00:24:16] Do you start that process by just going for a walk?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:24:21] Exactly. Go for a walk and just wander all around. Get to know everything on the property, and you hit some points that you think, “This is really [worth] having along the trail somehow because it’s a beautiful little mini tableau of whatever, a stream, some woods, and so forth.” You catalog all those things, and in your mind, you decide, “Here’s how that trail really should go. ”

 

Galen Koch: [00:24:52] Yeah, that sounds like a great process.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:24:57] That was one. I really enjoyed when we had the opportunity to get the coming generations involved. You hear so much about the young generations who just want to stay inside, and they have their iPhones now, they have their tablets and playing games and whatever, and it doesn’t involve any contact to nature. I thought that’s really too bad or a loss and how important it was to get people started early. Maybe they’re in kindergarten or nursery school or whatever. I’m not sure exactly how early you can begin. Maybe it’s impossible to be too early, but just a way for that to happen. To me, that culminated in the Narragansett School – not the Narragansett. I’m sorry. Got a block here.

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:03] I think Don was talking about – was it the one by the Hawkes [Preserve]? Is it that one?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:26:07] Yes, exactly.

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:09] What is that school called? Oh, I just heard about it this morning, and I don’t remember. [Editor’s Note: The Hawkes Preserve is located next to Great Falls Elementary School, and you can enter the trail from the school premises.]

 

Richard Curtis: [00:26:15] Oh, no. Okay, well, it may come to me. Yeah, that’s the one. That whole connection, Don, really helped tremendously with that, by the way. The teachers can take the class right out, and there it is. They can spend whatever time they may have, whether it’s fifteen minutes or two hours, and not only see nature, which you can see plenty of, but then you also get to see some of the history of the area. The canal. What is a canal, and what does it do? And how did it work? And kind of get all those things worked into the – to me, that’s a really super thing. Finally, what I put down was it’s always fun walking around someplace and looking at some hidden bit of history that’s there. Of course, you see a lot of that at the powder mills, the Gambo powder mills. There’s so much history there. But even at any of these other preserves, there’s almost always some remnant of bygone years. Maybe it’s just a stonewall, maybe it’s an old foundation, or it could even be a certain type of plant that you know – this is not native; how did it get here? I enjoy just going around the property and looking at those things and trying to imagine what was it like back when this thing was really going. So, those were some things that I just enjoyed doing, and that was very much a part of the Land Trust experience.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:03] Do you have a favorite place?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:28:07] Oh, I could hardly begin. I don’t know. They’re all so wonderful. If I had to pick a favorite, now that you’ve twisted my arm, I think the entire canal route. As much of that as we get public access to on the Hawkes Preserve and Gambo – in fact, the old canal and towpath run between those two things. It’s not publicly accessible, but I’ve talked to landowners who are glad to let you walk there. I’ve gone the entire length of that part of the canal, and it’s all interesting, every bit of it, and amazing.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:48] That’s really cool.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:28:49] I would take that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:52] Backing up a little bit to the organization itself and growth, it sounds like there were a lot of shoestring budget years. Was there a moment where that changed or where you felt like you could see the future became a little more clear?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:29:23] I mentioned the five-year strategic plan. That kind of gave us an outline of where we think we want to go. For me, it was a way of lifting my head up from the issues of today and looking out there and seeing here’s where we could be if we work at it and do it right. That was a turning point moment. I think the next turning point moment actually happened probably after Mike Parker took over as president, and we became more financially stable through a variety of money input, grants, and so forth. We became more stable even a little bit before that; we had decided that we could afford a full-time executive director. Under Mike’s guidance, we got to the point where we could actually afford to do that, and that felt really good. That was a turning point, for sure.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:34] It’s amazing to think of how many years you persisted without an executive director or staff.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:30:41] Right.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:44] Wild. That’s hard to do.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:30:45] Right, we had no staff for a long, long time. Whatever we could do individually, we did. Everybody chipped in and helped out some, so nobody had to do it all.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:58] This question – you may have already shared this, but some stories that you haven’t shared that are important to understanding the history of the Land Trust or how it brought value to the community? Are there pieces that were missing?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:31:17] Yeah, I didn’t come up with anything. I’m sure there are. There are a lot of pieces, but nothing that’s coming to mind right now.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:27] And what’s the role that you’re in currently with the Land Trust? How are you involved these days?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:31:35] Well, I’m on the advisory board, so from time to time, I check in and see how things are going. And gosh, in the past few years, it’s been so terrific that I just am in awe of how things have progressed. So, that’s the role right now.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:56] And walking on the trail sometimes.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:31:59] Yes, walking on the trails sometimes.

 

Galen Koch: [00:32:02] That’s great. Has the general sentiment around that kind of conservation changed in your time?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:32:13] I think it’s changed both here locally and in the country as a whole. Land trusts are getting a better review, and more people are aware of the importance of nature and the importance of, let’s say, wildlife habitat. They were something that can get completely ignored if you don’t have something like a land trust to conserve some land and make the space for it. I think the whole environment for land trusts has changed for the better.

 

Galen Koch: [00:32:52] It does seem that way. I don’t know why I thought of this, but I think a lot of people who I’ve talked to were retired when they got involved, but were you still working?

 

Richard Curtis: [00:33:04] Yes, I was still working. I have to say my allegiances were divided between work. I was also starting a new company that was also a bootstrap kind of operation at first, and so I was doing that at the same time we were doing the bootstrap on the Land Trust. My allegiance and my time was very much divided between those two. Of course, there’s no way to replay that. It was what it was, but I wish I could have spent more time with the Land Trust, somehow. I don’t know how. I had a family, too.

 

Galen Koch: [00:33:44] Right. Yeah. I think it’s unusual. Many people are getting involved after they’re done with their job. That’s kind of a progression of these things. Your story’s a little different in that way.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:33:59] Yeah, it is a little different. Nothing to add beyond that, beyond the fact that –

 

Galen Koch: [00:34:08] Yeah,  you were just motivated.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:34:10] I wish there had been two of me, but there wasn’t.

 

Galen Koch: [00:34:13] Well, that’s inspiring that you did it anyway. Well, thank you.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:34:18] You’re very welcome.

 

Galen Koch: [00:34:20] I don’t know if there’s any other things that you want to add before we stop. Thank you very much.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:34:26] I think that’s it. I’ll be really interested to hear the other interviews because I’m sure people are going to come up with things that – of course, I knew that; I just didn’t remember it right now.

 

Galen Koch: [00:34:40] As I’m listening, people are filling in gaps. It’s really interesting. Yeah, it’s very interesting.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:34:49] Yeah. There’s a lot there that’s happened.

 

Galen Koch: [00:34:53] Thank you very much.

 

Richard Curtis: [00:34:55] Well, you’re very welcome.